Abstract
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently prepares
its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Its authors assess peer-reviewed
scientific literature and recent climate datasets to inform
policy-makers about the current state of the science regarding climate
change and its impacts, as well as adaptation and mitigation options.
For AR6, efforts are underway to make its main results FAIR and preserve
them in the TRUSTworthy repositories of the IPCC Data Distribution
Centre (DDC), jointly managed by CEDA, DKRZ, and CIESIN. The AR6 FAIR
initiative was kickstarted by the IPCC DDC and Working Group I (WGI)
[Stockhause et al., 2019], then adopted by IPCC TG-Data (Task Group
on Data Support for Climate Change Assessments) shortly after its
creation. All three WGs have adopted the FAIR data guidelines. IPCC
assessments are large and diverse in in terms of scientists involved as
well as included scientific objects. Challenges for digital data
curation are related to the scale and diversity of papers, reports,
datasets, the variety of software, and the different familiarity of the
scientists with these technical aspects. The following priority areas
for improved data stewardship were selected based on the aims to enhance
the traceability of AR6 key findings and their reusability: preserve
figure datasets in the DDC; - preserve analysis software; . preserve
main input datasets in the DDC; . assemble datasets and provenance
information on the figure creation from IPCC authors; and . interlink
datasets to the IPCC report. Datasets are transferred to the DDC at the
end of AR6. The DDC partners are responsible to preserve the data for
future reuse by different stakeholders and under a variety of current
and future scientific and policy-related questions. As the role for the
DDC expands within the IPCC, new partners are sought. The TRUST
principles provide a framework for the communication of DDC tasks to
different stakeholders, e.g. to countries interested to host a DDC. The
presentation will give an overview over the IPCC AR6 approaches towards
FAIR data maintained in TRUSTworthy repositories, their challenges,
their approach to meet these challenges and open questions, e.g. the
integration of digital data into the IPCC Error Protocol, targeted
within TG-Data.